


Unexpected

by Mia_Vaan



Category: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012)
Genre: Apritello, But also a good bro, F/M, Gen, Raph is a well-meaning idiot, au-ish, has some one-sided Capril but not for long
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:21:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29533299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mia_Vaan/pseuds/Mia_Vaan
Summary: Casey wants to ask April out on a date, so Raph decides to talk to Donnie about finally letting her go.It doesn't go as planned.Takes place some time after season 3's "Battle for New York".
Relationships: Casey Jones & Raphael (TMNT), Donatello & Raphael (TMNT), Donatello/April O'Neil (TMNT)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 30





	Unexpected

**Author's Note:**

> So this fandom officially has me in its iron grip and won't let me go. Nevermind that I'm supposed to be working on the next story in my Star Wars series... 
> 
> This is just a fun little scenario that came to me after reading A Ghost of a Chance (go read it if you haven't already) and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it down. Enjoy!
> 
> Rated Teen for mild swearing.

“Hey, what are April’s favourite flowers?”

“Huh?” Raph took his gaze off the New York sky line and turned to face his patrol buddy. Casey was watching him expectantly and Raph realised that the dumb question had been aimed at him. “How the shell should I know?”

“She said she lived with you guys for weeks,” Casey said, swinging his legs off the building they were perched on top of. “I thought it might have come up.”

Raph resisted the urge to roll his eyes. If it had, then Donnie would’ve already taken advantage of that little factoid and decorated the lair in flowers.

“She doesn’t seem like the flower type,” he said. “What’s this about?”

Casey scratched the back of his head, mindful of his oversized glove. “I, uh… I was thinking about asking her out on a date. Like, a _real_ date. Now that the Irma-Bot 5000 isn’t around to invite herself along, I thought we could take the next step. We sorta went on dates before, but she said we were just hanging out and it would be nice to give what we’re doing a title or name or whatever…”

On the one hand, Raph wanted to scratch his own eyes out. Talking about relationships made him want to barf. One of the reasons he liked hanging out with Casey was because it got him away from Donnie’s endless April-pining and Leo’s what-the-hell-is-this-relationship thing with Karai. But on the other hand, Casey was his friend.

“I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to give a girl flowers when you go _on_ the date, not before,” he said.

“I know,” said Casey. “But I thought if I gave them to her when I was asking her out, they might help sweeten the deal.”

“If she doesn’t want to go out with you, a bunch of daisies won’t change her mind.”

“But I think she does,” Casey went on. “I think we were really getting somewhere last year. I mean, sure, she gave me the cold shoulder after the invasion…”

Raph punched his arm to shut him up. “Look, just ask her straight. The worst she can do is say ‘no’.”

“If you say so.” Then he sighed like he was about to line up in front of a firing squad. “Look, man, I know you’ve gotta put your brothers before your friends, and I totally get that, I do. But…”

“You’re expecting me to be routing for Donnie instead of you,” said Raph. “And yeah, Donnie’s my brother and brothers come first, but that doesn’t mean I’m gonna give him false hope where he’s got no chance.”

Casey sighed with relief. “Good. I’m not looking forwards to how he’s gonna take it. I mean, he and I have been getting along better since taking on the Speed Demon, but this is different. It’s about April. I know he’s crazy about her and I don’t want that to come in between our friendship.”

Raph sighed, too. This day was going to come eventually. And while he hadn’t been looking forward to it, he knew it was about time. He was getting tired of watching Donnie chasing after this hopeless dream, knowing that his brother was going to get his heart broken in the end. He’d thought that after the incident with Bigfoot, Donnie would’ve learnt his lesson and left her alone. But while he had toned it down a notch, he was still making eyes at April.

It had to stop.

“If you want, I can talk to him?” he suggested. “Soften the blow for him.”

Casey brightened up. “Could you? I’d owe you big time.”

“Nah, you don’t owe me anything,” said Raph. “I’m doing this for the both of you.”

They bumped fists, and that was that.

The night was quiet, so the pair decided to head back early. It was clear that Casey was itching to get back to lair and ask April out.

When they jumped over the turnstiles, the main part of the lair was mostly empty with the exception of Mikey, who was sat in the pit playing a video game.

“Yo, Mikey!” Casey called out. “You seen Red?”

Mikey didn’t turn away from his game and continued whacking the controller with his thumbs as he answered. “She’s in the dojo with Sensei and Leo. Important ninja stuff from the sounds of it. Wanna play?”

Since it was clear that he wouldn’t be able to talk to April until she was done, Casey shrugged and hurried down into the pit. Raph meanwhile looked towards Donnie’s lab. “Is Donnie in his lab?”

“Yeah.” Mikey still didn’t take his eyes off the screen. “I don’t think you should disturb him, bro. He threw a wrench at my head earlier.”

“What did you touch?”

Mikey didn’t answer, which was all the answer that Raph needed.

He was tempted to leave the conversation for another time if Donnie was in a bad mood, but figured that would probably be worse in the long run. It would be better for all of them if he got through to his brother before Casey asked April out, so they could all avoid the nuclear meltdown.

When he entered the lab, Donnie was wearing his goggles and working on something at his desk. Probably still trying to replicate the Insta-Retro-Mutagen that Mikey had created by accident.

“Hey, Donnie, can I talk to you for a minute?” He positioned himself in front of the desk and crossed his arms.

Donnie didn’t look up from his work. “Can this wait?” he asked.

“No, it really can’t,” said Raph. “It’s about April.”

That got his attention. He looked up and removed the goggles, revealing a pair of worried eyes. “April? Is she OK?”

“She’s fine, unless Leo’s boring her to death in the dojo,” said Raph.

“Oh.” Donnie got up and walked over to another table, one filled with bottles of various chemicals that Raph couldn’t pronounce the names of. “Then why do you wanna talk about her?”

Raph sighed, suddenly realising just how hard this was going to be. He knew it had to be done, and he typically wasn’t one to shy away from tough love when it came to his brothers, but… It still wasn’t fun, knowing that what he was about to say was going to hurt Donnie’s feelings. “It’s more about you than about her. Listen, Donnie, don’t you think it’s time you… let go?”

“Let go?” Donnie turned back to him and frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean, Don.” Raph threw his arms up in frustration. “You need to let go of the idea that you actually have a shot with her. I told you before back at the farmhouse: she’s a girl, you’re a giant mutant turtle. It’s never gonna happen.”

“Technically, she’s a mutant too, and we’re both half-human-”

Raph growled with frustration. “You know what I mean! All that pining and those longing looks and stupid attempts to win her over need to stop, because you’ll just keep hurting yourself.”

The look Donnie gave him was controlled and didn’t betray what he was thinking. Which was different than normal; whenever Raph confronted him about this before, Donnie either snapped at him and doubled down with his attempts, or he just sadly plodded away to sulk for a few days before inevitably bouncing back and trying again.

But this Donnie was in control. Maybe that meant he was finally seeing reason…

“I don’t need you to try and make my decisions for me, Raph,” he said, walking back to his desk with a bottle in his hand. “What’s going on between April and I is our business and no one else’s. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”

He sat back down at the desk, put his goggles back on and continued working.

For a moment, Raph didn’t know what to say. Indifference was certainly a different response, but it wasn’t going to deter him for long. With a sigh, he decided that he needed to bring out the big guns, no matter the collateral damage and how much Donnie would be hurt in the process. He would heal, eventually.

“Look, Donnie,” he began, unfolding his arms and stepping closer, “I didn’t wanna have to say this, but… Casey’s gonna ask her out tonight. And chances are, she’s gonna say yes and they’ll start dating.”

Donnie once again stopped working and removed his goggles. But instead of the shattering heartbreak that Raph expected to see in his eyes, all that was there was a frown. “That’s a lot of presumption there, Raph.”

“Casey told me he was gonna do it,” said Raph. “And OK, maybe April will turn him down. Who knows? But you’ve gotta be ready for the alternative.”

There was still no sign of an emotional reaction from his brother and Raph was starting to get a little worried. Had this news broken Donnie so much that he couldn’t even emote anymore?

His brother was silent for a few moments before he reached for his T-phone and started texting.

Definitely not the reaction Raph was expecting. “Donnie, what’re you doing?”

Donnie just quietly held up his finger as he finished the text and pressed send. He then placed the T-phone back down, removed the goggles entirely and stood up, walking around the desk closer to Raph. He then leaned against it as if he was waiting for someone.

Raph could only stare at him. This conversation wasn’t going at all like he’d planned. “Are you gonna say anything…?”

“I’m waiting for April.”

April. Dread began to form somewhere deep down, but Raph didn’t want to contemplate it. Surely Donnie wasn’t enough of an idiot… “She’s in the dojo with Leo and Splinter.”

“She said she’d be finishing right around now.”

Sure enough, the lab door opened and a smiling April skipped inside. She’d been a lot happier since they’d taken back New York from the Kraang, and Raph guessed it was due to finally being reunited with her dad again. It was almost like she was glowing.

Behind her Casey called out, “Red! Can I talk to you?”

“In a minute, Casey!” April yelled over her shoulder before shutting the lab door behind her. She turned and grinned at Donnie, then looked surprised when she saw that Raph was there, too. “Oh, hey, Raph. Um… What’s up, Donnie?”

Raph resisted the urge to bang his head against the wall. So, this was really happening. Donnie was going to try and ask out April before Casey beat him to it, and it was gonna end horribly. But then at least April would let him down, something she should’ve done from day one, and they could finally move on with their lives.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be painful to watch Donnie make a fool of himself.

“Raph and I have been having an interesting talk,” Donnie said to April. He actually looked smug, and Raph really wanted to take him into the dojo and punch that annoying smirk off his face. “He thinks I don’t have a shot with you.”

And he had to confess his feelings in _that_ way? Raph wanted to facepalm, but doing so would mean he would miss the inevitable blow up, so he turned to watch April’s face…

Wait, why was she smirking, too…?

“Really?” she said. Raph has the sinking suspicion that he was in the middle of some kind of trap. “Well, why don’t we enlighten him?”

Then she was crossing the room, walking straight over to Donnie, taking his hand and pulling him towards her and…

They were kissing.

 _April was kissing Donnie_.

Raph swore that his head was exploding.

It took him a few moments – moments that felt like eons – for him to process what he was seeing. And when he finally did, it clicked and he almost groaned in realisation. They were dating.

Donnie and April were a couple.

And upon recalling what he’d just told his brother, Raph felt like an idiot.

April pulled back from Donnie, the turtle who was definitely her boyfriend (Raph knew he was never going to hear the end of this from the both of them and probably Mikey too), and turned to smirk at the other turtle present. “You were saying, Raph?”

He really, really wanted to hit something. Preferably the two teens in front of him. “This… was not how I imagined this conversation going.”

“Well, you know what Sensei said about making assumptions,” said Donnie. He was smirking too as the pair linked hands like it was second nature.

“Before I punch the smirks off your faces,” said Raph, “does anyone wanna tell me when exactly this happened?”

“A few weeks ago,” said April.

A few weeks. They’d been together for a few weeks and hadn’t told anyone. Probably for the same reason Casey was concerned earlier: they were worried about hurting the unfortunate third member of their dumb love triangle. And probably wanted to avoid the relentless teasing from Mikey and… yeah, Raph too.

He mapped out the past few weeks in his mind, wondering what could’ve caused this development. All he could think of was taking New York back from the Kraang. Maybe they’d gotten together in the aftermath? It would explain why April had been so happy since then.

It would also explain Donnie’s recent attitude shift towards Casey, he realised. Though their friendship had gotten better since the incident with the Speed Demon, they’d still bickered occasionally over April. At least, up until their battle to take New York back. Since then, moments that would usually incur another fight over her – Casey touching her shoulder, the two going off together, etc. – had been met with no anger from Donnie at all.

Because he simply hadn’t seen the need to.

“Well, technically, it started before that at the farmhouse,” said Donnie. “But we didn’t officially get together until a few weeks ago…”

Raph blinked. “Wait, the farmhouse? What happened at the farmhouse?”

Donnie and April exchanged glances, seemed to have a silent conversation (which given April’s powers wouldn’t be a big surprise) before coming to some sort of agreement.

“It was right after Bigfoot left,” Donnie began. “I realised you were right, about what you said. I was bothering April the same way Bigfoot was bothering me.”

“Donnie…”

He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze before continuing. “Anyway, I apologised to April and told her I was gonna leave her alone from now on. And…”

“…and I kissed him,” said April. Both of them looked at their feet, blushing.

Their reactions were enough to indicate that this hadn’t been an innocent kiss on the cheek. Raph raised his brow and folded his arms across his chest. “You kissed him. He gave you an out, said he’d leave you alone, and you _kissed_ him?”

A scowl descended over April’s face and the hand not holding Donnie’s balled into a fist. “You sure like to make a lot of assumptions about me, Raph. Thinking I avoided Donnie because I don’t return his feelings. Well, did you ever consider that it was because I _do_ and I just didn’t know how to handle them? My life was complicated enough without adding _dating_ to the mix and I had a lot of crap to figure out before I could even _begin_ thinking about what guy I wanted to be with!”

“April…” Donnie used his free hand to reach over and soothingly rub her shoulder.

She instantly relaxed under his touch and sighed. “Thanks, D.”

Raph raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, April. I didn’t mean to assume, it’s just… Well, it’s hard not to when we look like this and you kept ignoring his advances…”

“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve never been good at dealing with emotions or expressing them and because of this I tend to give off a lot of mixed signals. The thing is, I’ve never dated before. I’ve never had to deal with having feelings for someone else, so it was easier to just ignore them and deal with everything else first. And on top of all the crap that was going on at the time with the Kraang and Leo’s injury and worrying about my dad, I was having really big thoughts about what I wanted to do with my life. Was this it? Was this what I was gonna be doing for the rest of my days?”

It wasn’t what Raph was expecting to hear at all. April usually wasn’t so open about stuff like this; she usually kept these troubles to herself.

“But after Donnie said that he was gonna back off… I knew that if I didn’t do something, I was gonna lose him forever,” she continued. “So, I kissed him. I thought that was all I had to do, but then he looked so torn for the rest of the day; like he didn’t know what to think anymore. And I knew that it didn’t matter if I was ready or not. We needed to talk. So we did, in the barn that night.”

Raph vaguely remembered April following Donnie out there the night after Bigfoot left. They were out there for a while, he recalled, but hadn’t thought anything of it.

April smiled a little, obviously remembering that night, too. “I told him that I wasn’t ready for a relationship; that I still had a lot of stuff to deal with and things to figure out. But I also told him that I liked him too and that there was a chance we could be together someday if he waited for me, until I was ready.”

“And I said I’d wait forever, if that was how long it took,” said Donnie. They shared a smile.

Raph wanted to barf, but kept it to himself. Honestly, he wasn’t sure why he was standing there listening to the story of how they got together. But then part of him was a little curious, given that he’d initially thought that April wouldn’t give his brother the time of day. “So, it didn’t take you much longer to figure things out.”

She nodded. “It really hit me when you guys went to take back New York from the Kraang and I realised that if things went wrong, I’d never see Donnie again. And the list of all the things we could’ve done together if I hadn’t held back just wrote itself in my head. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure of what I wanted to do with my life, but one thing I knew for certain was that I wanted Donnie to be a part of it. Once the Kraang were defeated, I told him exactly that.”

“If you don’t approve, Raph, keep it to yourself,” said Donnie. “Because we don’t care.”

They looked at each other again, all sickeningly sweet, and Raph sighed. It was time to be sincere.

“Sorry, Donnie. About what I said earlier,” he said. “I really thought April wasn’t interested and that if you kept trying, you’d end up getting hurt. But I’m happy things worked out between you two. Just don’t act all lovey-dovey when I’m around, OK?”

“No promises,” said April. She stepped closer to Donnie and pressed herself against his side, getting a smile out of him.

“I know you were just looking out for me, Raph,” said Donnie. “Thanks.”

Raph sighed again. Speaking of looking out for people… “Now that’s all cleared up, April, you need to talk to Casey. He told me he’s gonna ask you out tonight.”

She looked skyward. “I know I need to talk to him. I’ve been putting it off.”

“Well, it’s time to face the music,” he told her. “He seems to think you guys have something from when you were hanging out last year. If you were leading him on…”

“I wasn’t,” she said. “At least, I didn’t mean to. One of the things I was trying to figure out was whether or not I should try to keep some semblance of a normal life. I had a plan and everything: finish normal high school, attend normal college, get a normal job, find a normal boyfriend. Casey was my go-to for the boyfriend part. But then the invasion happened and my illusions about having a normal life shattered. When they did, I realised that dating a guy just to bring some normality to my life was a pretty terrible reason to date someone. Especially when I had feelings for someone else.”

The fact that Donnie wasn’t even surprised by all of this, meaning she’d told him already, spelled good things for their relationship. Raph wasn’t sure if Casey would take it as well, since April _did_ technically lead him on (even though she didn’t mean to), but if Raph could say one good thing about Casey Jones it was that he always bounced back no matter what knocked him down. He’d be OK.

They left the lab together, though Donnie stayed by the door and watched as April approached Casey. Not out of jealously, Raph realised; he wanted to make sure that Casey was OK, too.

Mikey was still playing his videogame in the pit, but Leo had taken Casey’s place as the second player. Casey had moved to the pinball machine and smiled when April came up to him. Raph moved closer to the dojo and leaned against the wall, crossing his arms as he watched their conversation from afar.

Casey’s smile fell as April explained everything to him. He averted his gaze to the floor and looked like he wanted to kick something, at least until April rested a hand on his shoulder. Though Raph didn’t hear her, he guessed she was asking Casey if they could still be friends.

He sighed. Nodded. They hugged.

April made her way back over to Donnie while Casey crossed over to Raph. He still looked upset, but not as bad as Raph thought he would look. “Sorry, man.”

“Guess it just wasn’t meant to be,” said Casey with a shrug. Then he managed to smile. “Wanna beat each other up?”

Raph smiled back. “Sure.”

As they turned to walk into the dojo, Raph caught a glimpse of Donnie and April reuniting at the door of the lab. They embraced, kissed and rubbed noses, a display that drew howls and cat calls from Mikey and Leo. Donnie ignored them; he had this big dopey grin on his face as he led April back into his lab.

And though he was almost certain it would never happen, Raph prayed to whatever higher powers existed that if he ever got bitten by the love bug, he’d never look so stupid. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea how long my muse will stick to this fandom until it wanders off again, but until then I've started writing a multi-chapter fic. I won't post it until its done (because I hate leaving people hanging whenever I leave a fic on hiatus or even abandon it altogether), but I just thought I'd let people know that one might be coming in case anyone's interested.


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